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This week is Mental Health Awareness Week (13-19 May) and Jess Kear, our Graduate Digital Marketing Assistant, shares her thoughts on how cooking could help your mental wellbeing:

I can’t believe that it has been a whole year since my final exams at university. Exam season can be an immensely stressful period in a person’s life, leaving you bewildered and wondering whether it will ever end.
However, one thing that did manage to get me through those stressful months was cooking for myself and my flatmates. There are so many benefits to cooking, in terms of both your mental and physical wellbeing. So, for Mental Health Awareness Week, I decided to share with you the five ways cooking rejuvenates me and hopefully, you too.

1. A Stress Release
Whether you are a student or a full-time working adult, cooking can be a massive stress reliever. As someone who spends their whole day staring at a computer screen, I can sometimes leave work feeling exhausted.
Cooking allows me to forget my stresses, and instead, enables me to focus purely on producing a delicious meal for myself and others. It is a great method of clearing your head and make those difficult and stressful things on your mind seem easier to deal with. I can always guarantee that I’ll feel better after a cooking session!

2. Positive Social Aspects
I love cooking for people. I used to cook for my flatmates at university throughout my final year, even when I had deadlines. One of the best things about cooking for others is then being able to sit down, eat, and have a natter with them. This can be the perfect opportunity for you to talk to others about anything on your mind, which I can guarantee will make you feel better.
But you don’t need lots of guests around every night to benefit from cooking. Simply going out and buying the food can be a great way to socialise with others too.

3. Better Nutrition
Without a doubt, spending longer in the kitchen, planning your meals, and using fresh ingredients is a great way to improve your physical health, as well as your mental health. I found that the better I ate during exam season, the less stressed I felt; there definitely is a relationship between eating well and feeling better.

4. Improve Problem-Solving Skills and Creativity
Personally, I love experimenting with new food in the kitchen. I’m always looking for new recipes to try. Playing around with herbs, spices, and food combos is one of the best elements of cooking. It can vastly improve your creativity and problem-solving skills. Like anything, the more you practice, the better you will be. Cooking offers so many transferable skills that can help other aspects of your life.

5. Make You Happier
Cooking can be a powerful tool in making you happier. You don’t have to be a culinary-genius to get these benefits either! Spending time making something that you are proud of in the kitchen can increase the number of happy hormones being released! Ultimately, I’ve found that a cooking session can act as a form of free therapy.

So, for this Mental Health Awareness Week, get stuck into some cooking. You can find lots of delicious and easy recipes on our website which you can try. We would love to see any beautiful egg dishes you make, use the hashtag #CookingWithFairburns to feature on our feed. Happy cooking!